


the song remains the same

by meritmut



Series: i loved you well, when we were young [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, MISERY AND WIST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:16:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is a song, <em>their</em> song, and that's something couples have, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the song remains the same

Long ago, in the eternal summer of their own wild beginnings, they had lain together in the honey-scented twilight and looked out over the city from the seclusion of his balcony. No words passed between them: none ever needed to, even then. They were safe there, undisturbed, where they could slip into the easy skins of those other people - those rare selves they kept for moments just like this. There came a melody drifting on the balmy evening air, soft and light to catch at the loose strings of the heart. She felt his clever fingers pick up the tune and strum it out over her skin, gentle as rain on her bare arms. She leant into his chest until she could hear the lazy thrum of him beneath her cheek, a steady accompaniment to the pipes that played them into nightfall and roused the stars from slumber to soak the gaudy heavens in their light.

-

He hums the song often when she lies in his arms, when her head rests in the curve of his shoulder and his lips are a breath away from her temple, and she remembers that night even when she is alone. They don’t often find time to simply _be_ , and she’s a restless spirit by nature, but more than once she’s been toe-to-toe with Asgard’s finest in the fieldyard and heard the plaintive tune echoing out over the barracks (he does it deliberately, she can tell; he knows how to play her like a fiddle and takes such joy in it that she can barely summon the will to begrudge him), and felt the overwhelming urge to cast down her arms and find him out forthwith.

Just the sound of it is enough to send shivers down her back, swelling in the notches of her spine with the clandestine magic of anticipation. She’s no romantic and nor is he but there’s something about having this token whose significance is known only to the pair of them that brings its own warmth.

It becomes their tune, the thing to which she clings after all else is gone.

-

She wasn’t his to mourn, by the time the hour comes to do so, but of course he grieves for the loss of her as though a piece of himself that has been torn away (maybe it has, it's a truth that he's not felt whole in a long time). He pays a skald to play their melody as the flames soar high and low through the long night, and he does not move from his vigil until the sun’s light turns the edge of the world to gold and there is nothing left but the shadows and the song.

The song that haunts him now, more of a ghost than she who is gone from him. She was too much of the earth to linger here without the feel of it beneath her feet – Valhalla welcomes her with open arms but he is left with nothing but the music, and he'll die himself before he lets it go.

It fills his head as nothing ever did, clouding every thought and pervading every moment with the recollection of her.

Sometimes he hates it, wishes he’d never heard it and never known her face in the darkness or the light, and least of all in the fire. And then sometimes…sometimes he craves every note as he lies alone and fills the spaces she leaves with the siren call of the piper’s song, longing for the warmth of it rising on her voice, wordless but so _eloquent_ for what it meant.

(He was fortunate to ever hear her sing, he knows. Few did. He wonders if that's changed since she was called to the feast, if her voice rings out the golden rafters.)

Sometimes it’s enough to bring her to life again, a flickering shade of the past that leaves him furious with his own weakness and cursing that he ever fell so far.

Sometimes, he thinks, _if he could only fall a little further..._

He knows she’ll be there waiting.


End file.
